Opening Performance: Thursday, May 18, 5:30-7:30pm
FraenkelLAB is pleased to present the multi-faceted exhibition Chris Kallmyer: Listening is a Luxury from May 18 – June 17, 2017. Chris Kallmyer is a sound artist, curator, and performer whose work explores a participatory approach to making music. Listening is a Luxury will bring together objects, performance, and a book of musical scores through which the artist questions the accessibility of listening and how the ear can be enlivened through real and imagined sound.
Kallmyer’s visual and sound works often use everyday materials, transforming them into unusual objects and musical instruments. The exhibition will feature Kallmyer’s project Commonfield Clay, in which soil was made into sound. Through a residency at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis, Kallmyer created ceramic chimes from clay collected from the banks of the Mississippi River. At FraenkelLAB, the earthenware instruments in Commonfield Clay will be activated with performances by Kallmyer and a number of Bay Area artists during the opening reception on May 18 and on Friday evenings from May 26 through June 16.
For Listening is a Luxury, Kallmyer also will debut All Possible Music, an oversized book of musical scores reflecting different conceptualizations of what music could be—including music that could never happen. The book, created through a process similar to exquisite corpse drawings, aims to conceive of music in an expansive context, including the following scores:
Immersive speed metal for a cactus
Sentimental opera in the bottom of a canyon
Slow motion dance party in a tiny space
A warm embrace that goes on for way too long
The work of Los Angeles-based artist Chris Kallmyer (b. 1985) was seen and heard most recently in the Bay Area at SFMOMA, where he presented A Paradise Choir as the first Performance Fellow at the newly reopened museum. Kallmyer has received commissions from San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Walker Art Center, The Hammer Museum, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, The Getty Center, Berkeley Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, and other institutions. His work also will be featured in Soundtracks, an exhibition at SFMOMA opening on July 15.
FraenkelLAB, opened in April 2016 and spearheaded by Frish Brandt and Jeffrey Fraenkel, is Fraenkel Gallery’s venue for adventurous artwork from any era and in any medium. Follow @fraenkelLAB on Instagram for the latest news about upcoming events.
